Sonny's Garden

Sonny's Garden

Planting cumber starts Sonny's garden sign is done Watering squash Bee House Leadership Project

Blue ribbon zucchini at fair Harvesting summer squash State Fair Results

Intern Profile

I want to be garden intern because....

• • I love plants

One of our primary goals for the garden is to provide fresh produce to the Willamette Valley Food Assistance Program. Two of my personal goals for working at the Dallas Youth Garden this summer are:

• • Self improvement

  • Improving leadership skills.

Two things I hope to learn for working at the Dallas Youth Garden are:

• • Leadership

  • Horiticulture

I think my biggest challenge will be:

• • Planning the garden.

My favorite vegetable is:

• • Summer squash

My least favorite garden task is: weeding

My most favorite garden task is: planting

I think a leader is: A leader is someone who takes charge.

My worst leadership skill or trait is: Planning.

My best leadership skill or trait is: Talking and presenting.

Garden Plan

Leadership Projects:

Garden Improvement:

Mason Bee houses: Building habitats and places for the mason bee is very important for sustaining agriculture in the community.Not only does the mason bee provide pollination for local farmers.Mason bees are the native breed of bees.In recent years the mason bees population has been rapidly falling.This is due to invasive breeds of bees that kill off the local bees and take over the landscape and its not only that. GMO foods or Genetically Modified Organisms do have attractants in them to get the bees to pollinate, they also have insecticide in them witch kills the bees entire hive,leaving their population decimated.Tho these bees are a very important part of our ecosystem we are driving them to extinction so it is very important that we provide a safe place for these bees to habitate and keep them going as a native species.

Project name:Mason Bee Houses

Problem: The local mason bees are important native pollinators that are being killed off and need a place to seek refuge .

Solution: To help the bees we can build cheep colonies that can be placed just about anywhere.

Test Research:we are going to test the effectiveness of a plan to help increase the amount of local bees

Communication: i will be talking to the group about the benefits of mason bees and how to construct a bee house

Construction:we will need 4"x4"x14" block and a 6"x6"x 3/4" plank to build the bee house

Documentation:

Project name: Blueberry stand

Problem: we needed to raise funds and awearness about the garden

Solution: sell blueberries at the fair and hand out flyers and talk to the people at the fair.

Communication: talking to the people at the fair about the garden and talking with the other gardeners about what we did.

Fund Raising: selling buleberries.

Leadership: selling the blue berries helped with building social and communicaton skills needed to be an effective leader.

Project name: savings!

problem: we want to find out how much we have saved the west vally food assistance program if they bought the produce from a store

Solution: pick a few plants anf find out how much you harvested and what on avrege it would be worth

Communication: talking with the group about how much you saved

Squash,cabbage and cucumber: I saved a toatal of 367$ from my squash harvest at 1.26 a lbs, but i only got 8lbs of cabbage this year i only got 6.72$ woth of cabbage and i got 278$ worth or zucchini.

Leadership: An important part of leadership is knowing oyur product and how much you have produced

Garden Log

June 3 -I finish planting.

June 10 - I did some Watering and starting to weed.

June 17 - I did some weeding and watering,zinnias and carrots are not coming up. Squash and tomatoes looking good.

June 24 - watering, weeding started putting down paper and straw

July 1 - Just some weeding,fertilizing.

July 3 - Watereing.

July 5 - Watered and pulled weeds.

July 7 - Watering and plant up keep.

July 10 - I did some fertilizing.

July 12 - I replanted the plants that haven't come up.

July 19 - The plant that a replanted are coming up.

July 22 - The squash are producing great and the garden is overall doing well, Open house went well

July 31 - Two of the rows i planted are not coming up, everything else is doing great.

August 8th - Still harvesting lots of crookneck squash and zucchini. Got a blue ribbon for zucchini exhibit at fair. Picked blue berries and sold them at the fair.

August 14 - I harvested over 100 lbs so far this week and we have over a ton of produce this year! Talked with some of our sponsers and am going to state fair.

August 19 - Watering, i harvested chard and herbs.

Augest 30 -The tomatoes are finally starting to ripen. Harvesting and wateing, did a lot of weeding.

September 2 - Watering,weeding raddishes are almost ready harvesting tomatoes and chard alot more now, squash and zucchini are not produceing as well.

September 11 - well today was sammys last day and we only have one more day left. i had a great time and i hope future interns enjoy it as much as we did!